Month: February 2017

­My division of the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs recently agreed to collaborate on the electrification of vehicles in Hawaii. This is in part to help reach the state’s mandate for 100% renewable energy by the year 2045. This new initiative, called “Drive Electric Hawaii,” focuses on accelerating cost-effective electric vehicle use. More on the initiative can be found here.

For the logo design project, I chose to create a logo for the newly formed Drive Electric Hawaii initiative. To the right is a draft of the logo I had done a week ago. As you can see, they’re pretty different from then and now. As much as I loved the draft of the logo, when I happened to see it as a thumbnail on my computer file window, I couldn’t read some of the words. I thought there’s no way that would be able to print on something small like a pen.

Originally, I wanted to convey the words, “drive” and “electric” visually. The first thought came to mind was a car and a plug. What came out of that was the steering wheel in the first draft. After some feedback about the readability, I decided to take the lettering outside of the wheel. When I pulled the lettering out, the grey part of the steering wheel looked a bit silly so I omitted that as well. Now the green “wheel” had become abstract and not at all a steering wheel.

For the word, “electric,” I wanted a font that gave me the feeling of electricity or voltage. This is what I came up with – a bit of a script font that’s neither serif or san serif. A serif font is used for the other two words. I got some feedback about the other font that it wasn’t the same and I should match it. Surprisingly, it is the same font. So, I had to revisit “drive” and “Hawaii” and see how I can improve it. I decided to italicize “Hawaii” to make it match more like “drive.” I hope it helped with the font issue.

As you’ll see from the color palette, I went for only three colors – the teal, dark grey and green that sort of reminds me of a “recycle” type of green. Again, going for this sort of “clean” energy/save-the-earth kind of theme in colors. As for the color of “electric” I went for a teal color that reminded me of a typical Nissan Leaf or Toyota Prius electric vehicle.

For the green wheel, I added a stitching in the middle of it, borrowing from what we learned in the Varsity Lettering tutorial. The stitching there was made to give a look of a lane line on a road. Doesn’t look like much people got that impression from feedback which is okay. On a suggestion, I played around with the colors; changing the wheel to grey and the dashes to yellow like a road but with the actual wheel concept gone, it didn’t look as appealing to me so I stuck with the green.

Now that I moved the lettering to the side, I had to reshape the cord between the “c” in “electric” to the plug. The cord is still the most difficult part of the logo. I’m still not used to how the curvature part of the Pen Tool really works so I did my best to get it how I wanted it. Connecting the letter “c” and the cord itself was tough but I zoomed in on the connecting point to align it.

For the plug, I decided to break off the pins from the plug itself. That in turn created a “hidden” happy face formed from the plug but if you didn’t catch it at least (I hope) you still thought it was a plug. For me, it created a sense of fun and excitement (to drive electric vehicles anyway) within the logo.

Lastly, it was a minor edit but I added in an “okina” in “Hawaii” between the two “i” letters which is a Hawaiian diacritical to be more proper of the language and have an innate sense of localness for Hawaii residents.

My division of the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs recently agreed to collaborate on the electrification of vehicles in Hawaii. This is in part to help reach the state’s mandate for 100% renewable energy by the year 2045. This new initiative, called “Drive Electric Hawaii,” focuses on accelerating cost-effective electric vehicle use. More on the initiative can be found here.

For the logo design project, I chose to create a logo for the newly formed Drive Electric Hawaii initiative. As mentioned in my previous post, I’m not a graphic designer so this was definitely a challenge for me. I also don’t know how to draw so didn’t even attempt to put pencil to paper. So, I just started thinking about what I see when I read “Drive Electric Hawaii.”

I wanted to convey the words, “drive” and “electric” visually. The first thought came to mind was a car and a plug. After doing some research, there seemed to be a lot of that created already so I was deterred from the idea. I then started to think about a steering wheel of a car because it’s right in front of you when you’re driving. That’s when the ideas started flowing.

I started with the middle part of the wheel, creating a rectangle across and another one vertically down the middle on the bottom side. I used the polygon tool to bridge the horizontal and vertical rectangles to get the slanted shape in the middle.

For the word, “electric,” I wanted a font that gave me the feeling of electricity or voltage. This is what I came up with – a bit of a script font that’s neither serif or san serif. A serif font is used for the other words. As for the color of “electric” I went for a teal color that reminded me of a typical Nissan Leaf or Toyota Prius electric vehicle.

As you’ll see from the color palette, I went for only three colors – the teal, dark grey and a green (for the wheel) that sort of reminds me a “recycle” type of green. Again, going for this sort of “clean” energy/save-the-earth kind of theme in colors.

For the wheel itself, I added a stitching in the middle of it, borrowing from what we learned in the Varsity Lettering tutorial. The stitching there was made to give a look of a lane line on a road (in addition to actual stitching on a steering wheel). I had to a play around a little with the dash and gap size of the stroke to get it to how I wanted it.

The plug and cord was the last thing I added to the logo. I used the Shape Builder Tool to delete the grey vertical rectangle on the bottom of the wheel and to create a half circle for the plug with rounded rectangles to finish the pins. The cord was the most difficult part of the logo. I used the Pen Tool to draw a cord from the letter “c” to the plug.

I’m still not used to how the curvature part of the Pen Tool really works so that’s why I spent hours just on curving the cord to how I (sort of) wanted it. Connecting the letter “c” in “electric” and the cord itself was tough. I ended up using the Paintbrush Tool to fill in the connection. Originally, I had the cord going behind the grey part of the steering wheel but thought it would be cool to bring it forward but behind the text. This is the end result for my draft logo.

This was definitely no easy task. I’ve very much come to appreciate graphic designers because Illustrator, while offering tons of freedom, means much more work to create images from scratch. Illustrator is not as intuitive in my opinion like Photoshop is. Getting over that is the toughest part (I’m still not over it). I can see why it’s very powerful but sadly, it was more frustrating for me. I agree that this unit has been the most challenging thus far of the course and we still have yet to start our logo design project. *Crossing fingers I can get through it.*

I wanted to create a design that could be used for the division’s website, social media and could also be inserted into our division newsletter that’s emailed and printed for distribution. I decided to create a PSA on energy saving tips.

After a search, I landed on a light bulb background that would be the base of the design. However, after some feedback I received, the light bulb and the CFL bulb in the design were conflicting messages so I opted to change the background of the design to a CFL bulb. This didn’t change the background dramatically as it was still an overall dark-colored scheme.

Speaking of CFL, there were notes from two of my group members to define or change it as it didn’t explain what a CFL was. I changed it with a little trouble of fitting in all the text but I think I made it work by reducing the font size a smidge.

As for the three smaller pictures – I took those myself. I tried to use a neutral background to not take away from the object itself. The power strip photo initially had a different background that wasn’t black like the other two. A group mate suggested I change it to match the other two and it was a great note to take.

The black backgrounds were different hues of black so I had to go into each photo and with the magnetic lasso tool, outline the image to select the inverse and color it black. Then reinserted the new photos back into the design canvas. With the change, all three photos are blended now with the black in the background.

In my draft design, I had square borders around each photo. Since now they all have black backgrounds and the entire design with the new light bulb picture was black it made sense to get rid of the borders and have them free standing in black. I think it looks a lot cleaner this way.

Working on the Gestalt Theory of proximity – I grouped all three photos together on the right-hand side of the canvas. I think with the border gone now it still appears to have grouped together without having lines and borders to show for it.

The text list next to the photos were at first a san serif font (the same as the title on the bottom) but after some feedback and self-critique I changed it to serif font. And now that the background was black, I played around with shadows (since the light bulb was lit) and put in a drop shadow on the list text- giving it a little glow.

Another suggestion was to add a “point-to” reference like a URL or even a logo. I opted for a URL to find out more. I made this text smaller and colored white so it feels different from the rest of the list. I had trouble figuring out where to place it but settled with underneath the light bulb toward the bottom left.

In terms of the title, it just worked out to put it on the bottom. I had all this space with the background image and with the placement of the light bulb it seemed to make aesthetically more sense to place on the bottom instead of the top. I used a ruler guide (again, from what I learned from the Layer Masks tutorial) so that I could snap a perfect rectangle on the bottom to create a filled box with a lot of opacity. That rule tip really came in hand for this one. There were no edits that were made on this section compared to the draft version.

When comparing the draft version and this final version, I think there were a lot of great improvements that were made thanks to my group members’ input. I hope this design could be made useful at my place of work.